If you haven’t seen it yet, this may be about my favorite Infographic ever. It breaks down various occupations/professions by the partisan balance (based on campaign contribution data– imperfect, but it’ll do), of the persons in those professions. Not really a lot of surprises, but nonetheless so cool. You’ve got to go check it out, but here’s a sampling:

So many conclusions across the various professions. Among other things– the urban/rural divide is very clear. Also, creative professions are very much Democrats, much as business professions are very much Republicans.

Among the more interesting findings to me are the differences within a narrower occupational section (and the reason why I chose this section of the screen). When you drill down into physicians, you find that generalists (Internists, Pediatricians, Family Practice) tend to be Democrats whereas specialists tend to be Republicans. Let’s be clear, generalist physicians do quite well economically, but it is also pretty clear that they are not motivated to ring all the dollar value they can out of their medical degree. Specialists earn a lot more and are a lot more Republican. And I don’t think, it’s higher tax rates, but more so the selection bias of who chooses what type of medicine to practice. In fact, almost this whole chart is a lesson in selection bias. I just think it is fascinating (and somewhat telling) the occupations that liberals and conservatives self-select into.

One of my professor friends remarked that he was surprised that all the disciplines under college professor were so Democratic (apparently, he hasn’t really been paying attention). But I’m not. I’ve you’ve got a PhD in Math or Economics you surely have an ability that can earn you way more money outside of academia (less so, the truly overwhelming category of English professors). The fact that these persons have chosen to forgo higher earnings in exchange for an occupation that puts more value on knowledge and autonomy is presumably quite related to one’s underlying political values.